The Quincy Patriot-Ledger introduces us to the ten-foot-tall statues of two Catholic saints that Mayor Tom Koch is paying to have installed at the front of the city's new public-safety building - St. Florian pouring water on a flaming building for the firefighters and St. Michael standing on the head and neck of a guy screaming in agony to represent police.
OK, the guy is supposed to be the devil, not George Floyd, and presumably the finished statue will have Michael wielding a sword, but unlike other depictions, which clearly show the devil as a dragon, or winged, you have to look twice at Quincy's depiction to see the horns that are supposed to show the person being suffocated to death is the devil.
Also, the paper quotes Koch as saying St. Michael is "a figure common to Christianity, Islam and Judaism," so quit yer bitchin' about First Amendment issues and never mind that Jews don't have saints or, for that matter, view Satan as an actual being.
H/t Jon Gorey.
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Comments
Jesus fuck
By SwirlyGrrl
Sat, 02/08/2025 - 9:43pm
He's gone full 4th reich!
I'd give the ACLU a call but
By bannedinboston
Sat, 02/08/2025 - 10:24pm
I'd give the ACLU a call but I suspect they have bigger fish to fry.
pearl clutching commences
By deselby
Sat, 02/08/2025 - 11:12pm
Here's a picture from behind the Patriot Ledger paywall.
A bit too baroque for my taste, but 10 year old kids might like it.
The irony is that statues like this are all around Italy and Spain and the same people who are flipping out about this bit of public art love the public aesthetic there.
probably allowed under the First Amendment
By deselby
Sat, 02/08/2025 - 11:56pm
The traditional symbology of St. Michael and St. Florian as avatars for police and firefighters "secularizes" the statues and overcomes the particular religious endorsement.
See Van Orden v. Perry, 545 U.S. 677 (2005)
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/545/677/
Absolute bullshit.
By Lee
Sun, 02/09/2025 - 8:30am
There is nothing secular about these statues. To install them in a public government building is a violation of separation of church and saint.
What next? The Ten Commandments in front of the Quincy courthouse?
you obviously did not look at the Supreme Court case I linked to
By deselby
Sun, 02/09/2025 - 9:35am
Van Orden v. Perry,
which was, in fact, about allowing a six foot high tablet of the Ten Commandments in front of the Texas State Capitol.
Sorry, we don't make the rules, Supreme Court does. And this Supreme Court? It will allow these statues.
I suggest you and others get enraged about things other than baroque public art.
Waste of $850,000
By mg
Sun, 02/09/2025 - 12:33am
This is already a super-expensive building without paying $850,000 for really ugly statues.
here's the St. Florian statue
By deselby
Sun, 02/09/2025 - 1:09am
If you think this means "the Fourth Reich" you've really lost the plot.
Again, the type of thing you see twenty times a day in a European city that creates a more interesting city environment. Like many public statues, not a masterpiece but well-proportioned.
BTW Adam, functionality on inserting images in the new site is excellent.
I don't think
By brianjdamico
Sun, 02/09/2025 - 10:13am
that it's the Saint Florian statue that is being seen as visually problematic here...
it's time to start ignoring this poster
By berkleealum
Sun, 02/09/2025 - 12:51pm
just because someone’s writing sounds persuasive doesn’t mean their argument has substance. we keep engaging with this poster only because their writing sounds persuasive, but the underlying ideas are consistently shallow.
Come over to the dark side Berklee
By deselby
Sun, 02/09/2025 - 11:51pm
Surrender to my persuasive Force.
really, what's the problem here?
By deselby
Sun, 02/09/2025 - 3:09pm
The St. Michael statue, which is of a style and content dating back to 1588 and linked to police through tradition, as "Charlie T" said, or anachronistically equating St. Michael to Derek Chauvin and the ugly Devil to George Floyd?
Jeopardy category "Things nobody else sees" for $500, Alex!
Adam frames these culture and religion things in a way to get the usual suspects foaming at the mouth, similar in style but not content to Fox News, and they don't pause for a second and think: Nah, that is not about Derek Chauvin and George Floyd.
Makes things fun there, though.
Find the racism
By Sock_Puppet
Sun, 02/09/2025 - 4:54pm
Adam thinks black people look like devils, Deselby doesn't. And that makes Deselby a racist?
establishing state religion
By Adrian
Tue, 02/11/2025 - 2:23pm
Many European countries have a state religion. (The King of England is the nominal head of the Anglican Church, otherwise known as the Church of England. The Church of Denmark is Lutheran. Etc.) Maybe many of their citizens pay little attention to religion, but their taxes still support the state religion. Maybe members of minority religions are welcome, but there is still a state religion. The US explicitly does not have any state religion at all.
Honoring a saint, a religious figure, is a religious thing. Churches do it all the time. Places that have state religions do it with their government buildings. The secular state of Hawaii can honor Father Damien for his work with Hansen's Disease outcasts, or the trying-not-to-be-quite-so-catholic nation of France can honor Joan of Arc for her attempt to defend the nation,
Those European statues that
By Kinopio
Sun, 02/09/2025 - 8:55am
Those European statues that are usually hundreds of years old are not being paid for by the taxpayers of 2025.
The muscular statue posted above is a hilarious contrast to how fat and lazy American cops are.
Overcoming the adversary
By Charlie T
Sun, 02/09/2025 - 11:42am
Statues of this nature are millenniums old. The caption often reads, "St Michael the Archangel overcoming the Adversary." The topic is often adapted as a patron iconograph for police since it suggest the police are there to defeat the criminal element.
A statue like this though smaller has been in place for Salem Police for many years. It was donated to them by the community.
There is no relation to any recent person. That is a manufactured opinion. The history of the imagery is very, very, old.
Like this one from 1588.
https://imaginemdei.blogspot.com/2016/09/michael-archangel-defender-of-f...
Where to even begin
By erik g
Mon, 02/10/2025 - 11:05am
OK, so the cops view the citizenry as the big-A Adversary, who must be overcome, via smiting-with-a-flaming-sword, or by stepping on their necks. Also those same cops are the sword-wielding archangels in this scenario. Did I get that right? Sounds good, we can work with that. I do have a few followup questions, though. Is it all the citizenry meant to be fire-garrotted, or just the ones who are evil? Do the evil ones helpfully self-identify, like by wearing signage showing their affiliation with Team Adversary (sort of like Bruins jerseys except with Mephistophelian horns)? Or do the cops do the sorting? Are the cops all wielding fire swords? Do they have internal groupings? Like, do the seraphim and the archangels have different insignia on their uniforms, or do we as observers have to go off their weapon choice? Where do they keep their fire swords when not actively overcoming Adversaries? Holstered? (Maybe "scabbarded" is the better term, but I'm not convinced that's actually a word) Is the standard QPD uniform flame-retardant? Otherwise it seems like you're gonna burn through (heh) your budget pretty quickly.
Quick exercise for the diligent reader: can you identify the difference between a statue donated by members of the community, versus sectarian commissioned artwork that the city (by which I mean "taxpayers of all races and creeds") pays handsomely for?
Racism is older that that.
By Freescholar
Mon, 02/10/2025 - 3:20pm
Racism is older that that.
Well, then
By Mara K.
Sun, 02/09/2025 - 6:08am
I’d think that a statue of St. Michael stepping on the devil’s neck like this outside of a police station was actually kind of cool if the Quincy Police didn’t suck and drop the ball with rape cases (although that’s not so unusual from any police department: it just happens to hit home). They didn’t even choose a cool depiction of St. Michael with multiple wings (six🪽total). Laaaaaame.
Maybe the Mayor should grow a
By Frelmont
Sun, 02/09/2025 - 7:19am
Maybe the Mayor should grow a spine and stand with truth and beauty and not the idiocy of the masses.
The truth and beauty of aping
By TownieTrash
Sun, 02/09/2025 - 11:24am
The truth and beauty of aping better masters in a stylistic dead end to slap a boondoggle on a waste of public funds?
Still better than the “The
By Frelmont
Sun, 02/09/2025 - 6:09pm
Still better than the “The Embrace,” the Greendale Human Being of public art.
Wow. People are arguing against art in Massachusetts. Such is the degeneracy of Socialist activism turning everything to an innocuous, unoffensive, unchallenging, uninspiring and meaningless grey.
But...
By lbb
Mon, 02/10/2025 - 12:19pm
But you just did it, Blanche.
Oh, Frelmont! You're such a degenerate Socialist activist, it gives me chills. Will you be my valentine?
Maybe the Mayor should grow a
By Frelmont
Sun, 02/09/2025 - 7:40am
Maybe the Mayor should grow a spine and stand with the truth and beauty of art and not tuck tail over social media chatter projecting their fantasies and thrusting their social agendas.
The mayor is the one
By Kinopio
Sun, 02/09/2025 - 8:47am
The mayor is the one thrusting their social agenda, in this case forcing their religion on others and stroking his own ego. What a pompous clown.
I disagree. Humanism can be
By Frelmont
Sun, 02/09/2025 - 9:41am
I disagree. Humanism can be found in every fibre of world religions. It shares the same space. The corpus of Western and Oriental (of rubber cigar fame) thought, philosophy and history is bound up in religious iconography and works. Even an atheist can walk and chew gum. The shape-shifting activists in the Massachusetts Legislature couldn’t let sleeping dogs lie and took the Wite-Out to our living history and continue the assault on the liberal Western values that made their activism and our prosperity possible.
Fascist word Salad
By Bostoneer
Sun, 02/09/2025 - 11:23am
This is absolutely incoherent.
I’m sorry, the far, far-left
By Frelmont
Sun, 02/09/2025 - 6:20pm
I’m sorry, the far, far-left are the fascists now. No art. No free speech. Right-thinking. Dogmatic social programming. An illiberal administrative structure ensconced throughout government and society. Red light and traffic surveillance cameras…
lol
By lbb
Mon, 02/10/2025 - 1:00pm
lol. Bot, you are so unsubtle.
And there you have it, from the bot who was sniping at a different piece of public art in another comment. "Art" is what the right wing says it is. "Free speech" is the right speaking whatever, wherever and whenever they want, free of consequences. Anyone else?
Translation: teaching Black history and telling students that LGBTQ people exist. This is "programming" against which a right-wing mind has no defense.
Translation: an actual government and not a kleptocracy.
Frelmont, I don't know how to tell you this...but no matter how hard you lick Elon's boots, he's still not gonna date you.
"shape-shifting activists" lol
By anon
Sun, 02/09/2025 - 12:25pm
wouldn't their activism in fact be in honor of "liberal Western values"? also implicit in the concept of "living history" is that things change and new things happen, whether you like it or not
Calm down, buddy
By Sock_Puppet
Sun, 02/09/2025 - 4:56pm
That's too much thrusting and stroking for a family website.
What did you expect? This guy
By anon
Sun, 02/09/2025 - 8:10am
What did you expect? This guy has already demonstrated he's no bridge builder.
Take a deep breath
By Casual Observer
Sun, 02/09/2025 - 8:27am
Take a deep breath. It’s the patron saint of police and firefighters. While the price tag is big, its public art and the sculptor is probably happy to get the patronage. There’s plenty of bad things going on right now to get riled up about. This isn’t one of them.
Bible Belt Burb
By Angry Dan
Sun, 02/09/2025 - 8:45am
Worship of cops and firefighters and endorsement of their majority religion will probably always be good mayoral politics. Too bad the taxpayers have to eat the cost for it.
Oppressive to the Devil-American Community.
By Sock_Puppet
Sun, 02/09/2025 - 8:48am
Lefties getting bound up about stupid stuff like this is how we got Trump back in. If we can't dig the non-MAGA party out of the ditch of BS obsessions with symbolism and infinite application of literary theory hair-splitting to reality, we will never have another party in power again. Figure out how to get the cops and firefighters who are happy to have these statues on the HQ to vote Democrat, don't give them more reasons not to.
Nonsense
By Bostoneer
Sun, 02/09/2025 - 11:27am
The Democrats have been neglecting their own base and running to the right chasing people who will never vote for them. That is how we got Trump back and doubling down on it only empowers them further.
You're right, but it doesn't matter
By necturus
Sun, 02/09/2025 - 11:38am
The foxes are now in charge of the hen house and are systematically dismantling the institutions of democracy.
We have just had the last significant election in the history of our country. Democracy was on the ballot and it lost.
Symbolism
By Lane Straddler
Sun, 02/09/2025 - 3:09pm
Tell me again about the BS symbolism...
*Points to American flag and the moral outrage generated by some millionaire sports figures kneeling during a British drinking tune with altered lyrics from a slave holder*
Don't you know there ain't no devil?
By tachometer
Mon, 02/10/2025 - 9:20am
There's just god when he's drunk.
--Tom Waits
"Saint Michael" is Michael the Archangel
By necturus
Sun, 02/09/2025 - 11:31am
...who is indeed common to Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, as well as the Baha'i faith.
Nevertheless, he doesn't belong on a public building.
There's a fire house in Cambridge with a mural that includes George Washington; that's far more appropriate, even if Washington never fought fires as far as I know. But Quincy has the Adamses; why not John Adams? He wrote the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, after all, which is more than any saint has done for Quincy.
Who Paid?
By DcHaviland
Sun, 02/09/2025 - 2:31pm
$850,000 for two statues? The stories behind the figures is well known, but to spend almost one million dollars on decorative sculpture is excessive, a waste of taxpayer money. Any resident could name better uses for this money. Quincy, City of Statues.
Where's DOGE when you really
By Don't Panic
Mon, 02/10/2025 - 1:45am
Where's DOGE when you really need it? /s
Where's DOGE when you really
By Don't Panic
Mon, 02/10/2025 - 1:51am
Where's DOGE when you really need it? /s
Be careful what you wish for
By necturus
Mon, 02/10/2025 - 9:01am
Musk is busy tearing down the federal government right now, but when he's done with that, he'll come after state and local governments.
In the end, it'll be one country, one people, one Elon.
Well, then
By Mara K.
Mon, 02/10/2025 - 8:39am
I’d think that a statue of St. Michael stepping on the devil’s neck like this outside of a police station was actually kind of cool if the Quincy Police didn’t suck and <a href="https://www.wbur.org/news/2024/05/09/massachusetts-legislature-boston-po... the ball with rape cases</a> (although that’s not so unusual from any police department: it just happens to hit home). They didn’t even choose a cool depiction of St. Michael with multiple wings (six🪽total). Laaaaaame.
Just go Greek or Roman
By blues_lead
Mon, 02/10/2025 - 3:46pm
It would have been so easy to have the statues be Greek or Roman figures, or other figures from an ancient, dead, and culturally relevant to this place and time tradition. Zeus, god of justice, for police, and Hestia, goddess of the hearth and of the home (fire and protections) for the fire department. There are probably better choices, I'm not a classicist, but at least they're not Christian saints!
Like, we should be spending public money on art! We should be adorning our public buildings! not ostentatiously or gratuitously, but a little!
Also the firefighter's legs are tiny! and why does he have a millstone?
Zeus and Hestia are religious figures
By deselby
Mon, 02/10/2025 - 10:32pm
There are a few "Hellenistic" worshipers in the USA. Probably some in Cambridge.
If you make the argument that the statues are unconstitutional religious establishment, it doesn't make any difference whether the religion has many or few believers.
The way they're using St. Michael and St. Florian, or the LA "Angels" or New Orleans "Saints" is not much different than the way Greco-Roman gods were and are used. The secular symbology diminishes the sectarian message.
Perhaps they could add a statue of Agni as a patron of firefighters
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